Back to Basics
by the stargate time traveller
Summary: Spoilers for 'Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror' the Doctor reflects on the fact she's back to square one as the Last of the Time Lords.


I don't own Doctor Who, please let me know what you think.

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Back to Basics.

When the Skithra Queen had asked her "Have you ever seen a dead planet?" after making her promise to pick Earth clean after overrunning it and wiping out humanity in the process, the Doctor had frozen.

The question was broader than the Queen would truly understand. At first, she was frozen in remembrance of all the worlds her previous selves had visited over the centuries which were either dead or as good as on initial impressions - Marinus, Aridius, Exxilon, Skaro….the thought of the homeworld of the Daleks made her sick, especially since some of the worlds in that list had something to do with the Daleks, but there were other worlds which were inhabited that had been drifting closer and closer to "dead world" status; Mondas, the Earth in several timelines she had seen, including that one which she herself and her Fam had encountered recently.

But right now only one world was reverberating in the Doctor's mind.

Her own.

Gallifrey.

Her ninth and tenth selves had never seen the "remains" of Gallifrey following the final battle of the Time War, but when she'd learnt Gallifrey was still out there following the mad plan she'd cooked up in three different lives, the Doctor had felt the stirrings of hope. Okay, that confrontation with Rassilon on Gallifrey after Clara was hit by the raven in that alley had snatched some of it away, and while she'd wanted nothing more than to scream with delight in her last incarnation that they were back on Gallifrey.

Unfortunately, the business with Rassilon and the resultant mess had prevented any celebration, and once she'd restored her memories of Clara the Doctor had felt it was better if she put some distance between herself and Gallifrey.

No big deal. She had done it before in her fourth and sixth incarnations for various reasons although the reasons for her distancing herself from her people in her sixth incarnation was mostly down to her disgust at how the Time Lords had allowed that insane and convoluted trial to take place, and how they didn't seem to care about the Valeyard being there, but she was just pleased Gallifrey was safe and she was no longer the Last of the Time Lords.

But now Gallifrey was once more wrecked because the Master had discovered something horrendous about the Time Lords, and now the Doctor had to look forward to uncovering another dirty little secret her people had hidden for aeons. In the meantime, she had to deal with these…these parasites threatening the world she had spent her lives defending, threatening to tear the world to pieces, not only because they wanted Tesla, but also anything that would benefit them, and the Doctor was just so disgusted and annoyed that the Skithra just could not do anything for themselves.

They had bastardised a piece of technology belonging to the Thassor, one of the oldest and most noble races in the cosmos, just to find someone to fix their technology. Nikola Tesla fitted the bill perfectly given how much of a genius the man was; Eddison must be jealous a race of aliens cared more for his rival than they did for him, but the Doctor didn't really care since her impression of the man was significantly less than she would have expected but she wasn't going to lose any sleep over it.

She could understand that given how she'd loaned her own expertise a few times to those in need, but the Skithra planned to destroy Earth and wreck it while plundering everything they could find.

She had told the Queen to stop. She had given them the chance to stop, to grow and to change, but while it would have been nice if they had just turned their attention away from their plans, the Doctor was left annoyed when they decided to continue with their plans to not only take Tesla and use him however they saw fit but they planned to conquer Earth anyway.

The Doctor had known for a long time much of her personality was almost identical to that of her tenth self (she wondered if her mind was struggling to keep up with the need for space with the additional regenerations she had now instead of the traditional thirteen lives and that in order to keep up her mind was adding more aspects of her previous incarnations to new incarnations instead of developing new personalities for her new selves), as she was very guarded about her past, but now she was issuing warnings like she had done in the past to those whom she knew was not going to take them anyway.

Destroying a race was always something the Doctor regretted, but like with the Rachnoss, she felt little sympathy for the Skithra; their wanton hostility and greed made them as unpleasant as the Krotons.

In any case, when she enlisted Tesla's help in destroying their ship, she was merely doing her duty as a Time Lord to preserve history. In the grand scheme of things did it truly matter if a race like the Skithra paid the price for their own arrogance?

The Doctor knew the answer to that question. Like with the Saturnyns, it was a resounding no.

The Doctor had met races and people like the Skithra before, but even the Ogrons had the sense to do things by themselves. The Skithra were just content with going into the universe, stealing everything in sight.

But she had something else on her mind, the fact she was once more back to basics. Ever since her ninth and tenth lives which had immediately borne the brunt of the loss of Gallifrey, she had experienced the frequent reminders of the absence of her people's stabilising influence. It had been slightly easier to cope with during her eleventh and twelfth lives especially since she knew Gallifrey was locked away in a pocket universe, but after seeing the destruction caused by the Master she knew was back to basics. She knew now every time someone referenced Gallifrey, the Time Lords, the War, or in this case dead worlds or galaxies, she would always recall Gallifrey in its current state.

She was once more the Last of the Time Lords, and all of her hope was gone.


End file.
